Comment envoyer une minorité d'étudiants surmotivés sur des objectifs pédagogiques intégrés et connexes dont le parcours est structuré ?
1) Faire une courte introduction engageante (15min.)
2) Identifier la minorité surmotivée et leur distribuer un parcours.
3) Assurer une supervision mininal avec un suivi distant et ponctuel au besoin.
Avec 2 exemples de parcours: une auto-initiation en 5 niveaux pour contribuer à Wikipédia; et un programme de 12 semaines pour démarrer un blogue sur un sujet de recherche.

How to get the few really motivated students involved? By asking them to fulfil « side-quests » learning activities in a structured itinerary :
1) Present a short but engaging initiation [sur quoi?] (15 min.) ;
2) After identifying the motivated students, give them a formal checklist [pour quoi?];
3) If needed, provide minimum mentoring and follow-up
Here are two examples : 5-steps self-initiation on how to contribute to Wikipedia and 12-weeks program to start a blog on research topic.

The purpose of this activity is to inspire students to adopt structured methods when they explore and retrieve information. It is based on lab notebooking methods and on managing and documenting the flow of references in Zotero, a reference management software.

The first principle is based on a tree of collections to manage the references arriving in the Zotero library. Some basic methods are suggested and the students are invited to create their own. The second principle is based on standalone notes to document all the research process through online database, libraries and experts.

Environmental science students critically analyzed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website and its treatment of climate change during the Trump, Obama, and Bush presidencies. This library “warm-up” activity was designed to raise awareness of data fragility and the long-term accessibility of government websites. As future science professionals, it’s important to think about how this impacts scientists and their work. Students were introduced to several tools including: The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, End of Term Archive, and Data Refuge. What happens when government web pages are hidden, moved, or deleted?

This is designed to introduce students to the wonderful world of periodicals, in their great variety, and to how they will appear in different databases. It also begins the work of building their skills at evaluating information sources, determining perspective.

This exercise was designed for 1st year writing students with several different goals in mind: • encourage deeper, closer reading; • introduce the concept that information sources have perspective; • develop vocabulary around describing information and perspective; • acquaint students with the many values/uses of subject encyclopedias; • practice topic narrowing using these types of encyclopedia articles.

This is a 65-minute workshop designed for 1st year composition students who will be using periodical sources in their research. Students will practice writing contextualizing statements, e.g. describing authors, genres, types of periodicals, for a variety of information sources of the type they will be using in their own research projects.

This concept map and activity explores how various sources of information are created, accessed, and shared. Students collaboratively define what makes a source traditional, emerging, public, or exclusive. Students are given a type of information source to map on the grid according to each axis, and provide a rationale for their placement.

In this exercise students use the Voyant word analysis tool to analyze Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. (Any literary work would work.)

As part of the research process, students need to learn how to organize and synthesize their sources. This short lecture, followed by a matrix outline given to every student, gives students the opportunity to focus their research question even more and to add their own ideas to the conversation of research within their chosen topic.